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6 Reasons Why I’m Reading Your Book Blog

I’m NOT a blogging expert and I certainly ain’t qualified to give anybody advices about blogging BUT, I can say I’m an expert at reading. I mean, obviously books are my life and since I blog, I also read other people’s blogs on daily basis. Last week, I stumbled upon one of Helene’s post about why she’s reading other people’s blogs. She list down a few things that she liked to read in a blog, particularly a lifestyle blog. As always, the post is both enlightening and inspiring. So I decided to write a similar post with a little twist on it. I’m gonna list all the things I like from abook blog, since it seemed to be my niche 😛

Most people are very visual and they judge a blog or website based on how it looks (including me). When I go blog hopping, the design of a blog is my first deciding factor on whether I’m gonna keep reading or not. I think it works for not only book blog, but also ALL the types of blog.

I don’t mean that you should be a design expert or put much money on it. I DON’T. I try to spend as little money as possible on blogging, considering the book itself is already expensive. Believe me, I feel you </3 Here are some things that in my opinion would make a blog look great and pretty :

Color coordinated design. It’s YOUR blog so any color of your choice should work but I’d love to see the colors go well together.

A lot of space. Wide, wide space, preferably in white. Do you notice my blog is all white?

Neat sidebar. I’m probably guilty of this because my own sidebar is almost a post long, but believe me, SIDEBAR IS IMPORTANT. What bloggers put on their sidebar helps the reader to easily navigate through their blogs. I’ve stumbled upon some blogs that don’t have a ‘follow button’ on their sidebar. If your blogs are so interesting but there’s no follow button…, well, I hate to admit that I’m a bit lazy to find it myself.

A representative featured image for your blog post. I’m always, always drawn to blog posts with pretty images. It could be anything, book photography, photo of your bookshelves, photo of your desks, book pictures that you grab from some stock photo websites, anything. It makes a post MORE interesting. I’ve been told that my post about books set outside the US has a pretty image 😛

Medium sized fonts with medium spacing

I don’t know about you but I don’t really enjoy book blogs that solely talk about book reviews. It’s OBVIOUSLY OKAY for people to review books on their book blogs, but I honestly think that your blog should have MORE contents than your goodreads account. Instead of just reviewing, discuss the books for a change. Both Alexandra from Twirling Pages and Ellen from Quest Review wrote some seriously amazing discussions about A Court of Mist and Fury. There are major spoilers but if you already read it, then you should check it out ♦

Cait from Paper Fury also writes some variety, fabulous contents related to our habits as bookworms and bookbloggers. She writes about her bookish confessions, her guide to get started on bookstagram and book blogging, and so many more interesting contents! She’s also funny and the things she says are mostly accurate so I bet you’d enjoy spending your time reading her blog 😛

It doesn’t have to beautifully written, but it should be at least neat and feel flowy.

If you want more people to read your blog, write in English. I’ve stumbled upon some bloggers from the link up of Top Ten Tuesday who write their posts in their own native languages. Your posts might be interesting and wonderful but what’s the point if we can’t read them?

Capitalize your ‘I’s and every other necessary letters.

Less typos

Put punctuation marks in the right place. I mean… its annoying . . to read a post like this ,,isnt it ?

I believe that an ‘about me’ page is one of the most important page from a blog. If I love a blog, I for sure wanna know the person behind it. I love reading an interesting description about you and posts about your habits or confessions, and most importantly, always put your personality on each and every one of your posts.

I LOVE IT when a blogger appreciates her/his readers ♥ I’m gonna take Cait again as an example. She ALWAYS responds to my comments enthusiastically. She’s bubbly and funny so it’s always fun to be interacting with her. She also always visits back my blog. Believe me, I don’t comment on her posts just because I want her to visit me back. I comment because her posts are interesting and provoking and I can’t help but giving her my own opinions. But I admit… it’s still nice and pleasing to have her stop by my blog 😛 I think it’s one of many reasons why her readers are pretty loyal and keep coming back for more.

On the other hand, I’ve stumbled upon a few blogs that don’t appreciate my comments. They either don’t reply or give my long and thoughtful comments a super brief reply. I mean, come on, I took several minutes to compose those comments. I’d be less likely to comment on those blogs in the future.

Too many words are boring unless you can keep it really interesting while too little word feels too… um… how do you say ‘gitu doang’ in english… um… plain, I guess? I’ve seen some Top Ten Tuesday posts with very little words in it. I know it’s meant to be a list, but I prefer if people at least provide some descriptions and the reasons why those books are on their list. A picture of Harry Potter cover might be self-explanatory and needs no further description, but a cover of underrated books or books written by your local authors?

I think 700-1000 words post works best for me.

So those are 6 reasons why I’m reading your book blogs. Please note that I DON’T TELL YOU HOW TO RUN YOUR BLOG. I mean, my own blog doesn’t even meet my own criteria :’) I’m just sharing my preferences from a blog. But I promis I’m improving! Hahaha. If you know any book blogs that meet my liking, please recommend them to me and drop the link. You can also drop your link though haha 😛

Anywayyy, what are the things you love from a book blog? I’d love to hear your thoughts 😀

Hey! I found your blog through Pinterest, and I just had to drop a line thanking you for giving me some good reminders (as I often blog about books!) as well as giving me some more book blogs to check out, which I always appreciate 🙂 Thank you!